A PDF is an e-book, effectively. I'm really not following how a book (a TeX/DOC converted to PDF, that you print off and send to a publisher) is any more or less capable of being maintained than a PDF. But then of course, that wasn't the point, was it. It seems to me that you got sidetracked in an attempt to out-do digitalmouse and generally lost your way somewhere.

Tiberath pointed to the notion that we would need to muster volunteer writers from somewhere, who would (one presumes) quite like some compensation. Your counterpoint of a company doing it seems rather daft, this is BYOND, the market is way too niche for a company to sink time into producing a book to sell.

I'm generally not sure about this whole talk of price either, I tend to prefer a cost-plus approach to this sort've thing.

No, I mean consider the cost of production, then work a price from that point. The kind of strategy that generally makes the current price discussion nice to know, but a bit trivial.

I would suggest those questions get answered prior to any serious discussion on price. Cost-plus.

Gift cards!

Sounds like a good community-wide project to me!

Jtgibson wrote:

The only hurdle is getting someone who is a good writer, is motivated enough, and is fun enough to read to release a new guide.

I don't consider myself a terrible writer, when it came to writing in school (short of essays), I always got high marks. And time isn't a problem at all. Unemployed, bored, restless and desperate all fit into "I'll do it!"

But the other important factor is skill. Whoever wants to write it would have to have a diverse knowledge of DM and yet be able to explain it in the simplest of forms. That is why I don't stick my hand up.

Sure, I'm a DM programmer, hell, I consider myself a reasonably good DM programmer at that, but there is still a lot I don't know. And I pretty much refuse to help people based on my own belief that I'm not good enough to do so.

Tiberath wrote:

But the other important factor is skill. Whoever wants to write it would have to have a diverse knowledge of DM and yet be able to explain it in the simplest of forms. That is why I don't stick my hand up.

As much as I agree, I would say, go test the product with a few people before releasing anyway and learn/improove it and yourself on the go.
There are sometimes people asking for a "mentor" (id:654725 , id:655659 , ...) and I think these would make a good test reader. The questions and sidenotes the leave to your guide as feedback are what needs to be considered.


Tiberath wrote:

(...)And I pretty much refuse to help people based on my own belief that I'm not good enough to do so.

Without wanting to say you should do the job, acually I think you would make a rather good person to do it.
From what I saw you know are one of the few people I'd say are good when it comes to DM. Sure, you don't know everything, but for a beginners guide, there is no need to!
Actually, you'll have to lower the level ad standards of your code for the guide, so I doubt that should be a problem, even more if you ask others to browse through the guide and your source as well.
I can only say that I saw a lot of helpfull and friendly posts with the name Tiberath above, so I don't think you're that bad at helping people with explaining things ;)

CaptFalcon33035 wrote:

Your thoughts are straying too close to the surface. There will need to be a coordinator, there always will be. Besides, do you think those little narutards will be helping with the book anyway? Hell no.

I think its too many ppl for that. And we already have a dev how-to forums for those.

I sugest 1 person do the writting of the book. Community could help with some ideas on what to add in the book as in problems and concepts that would be nice to explain. <-- I reccomend this for PDF only, as a friendly/colorful begginer book is still the best option in my oppinion.

Or they could just take out the code that is not best used out of the current DM guide and update it? Maybe adding a handful of other topics on the side? <-- this takes far less time and can help the current users,slightly more.

For a perfect-bound book, letter size, 250 pages, black and white -- pretty typical of any programming guide -- it's only approx $10 per unit. Any price the author charges on top of that is profit, and assuming profit wasn't a goal*, Dantom could easily just charge the original printing cost.

The front cover is in full-colour (included in the standard price) whereas the interior pages themselves are black-and-white.

Seems quite reasonable to me.

When Tom self-published the original Blue Book by ordering a few boxes off of a traditional printing press, it put him in the hole something fierce, and it took a very long while to recoup the cost of printing; the hands-off involved with using an on-demand printer like Lulu would be well worth it, in my opinion.


As for offering a free guide -- that's what Dream Makers is for. I'd much rather see a legitimate, pay-for guide to attract some people with actual money to BYOND! BYOND is good for the kids and all, but unless BYOND is marketed with the fervor (and toy line) of a Japanese cartoon series, the amount of money coming in from them will be less than nil. We need mature, experienced developers -- in the 16+ age bracket -- to start coming back to BYOND.

I myself have more or less stopped doing any BYOND development; I stick around because I grew up with these people moreso than anything else. But my money is always willing to part in BYOND's direction if something good comes up, and it might wind up drawing me back into the fold.


* I think profit is a goal; BYOND has made more progress recently than it has in the past several years combined due to the former chronic lack of external cashflow. I believe Dan also gave up on BYOND half-due to family commitments and other-half-due to it being a haemorrhage on his wallet. =)